Portrait of Sir Thomas Elyot.

Sir Thomas Elyot was a member of Sir Thomas More’s circle and praised him in his great treatise on education the Governor, (1531). After More’s execution, however, he reneged, asking Cromwell to forget the erstwhile friendship. The Governor experienced influence up to and throughout Elisabeth’s I reign. The book is thought to have been instrumental in determining the reformers to set up a tier of academies – the King Edward VI grammar schools – in the early 1550s